Physiological and Therapeutic Effects of Tea

Physiological and Therapeutic Effects of Tea
In China, from Tang Dynasty to Qing Dynasty (618-1911 A.D.), there had existed a great number of books contributed to tea. Those included mainly 3 categories, namely books in herbal medicines, tea manuals and general historic publications.

Tea was repeated to exhibit 24 kinds of physiological and therapeutic effects, such as causing less sleep, calming down, clearing sight, relieving headache, dispelling thirst, dissipating fever, detoxification, helping digestion, reducing obesity, diuresis, as a pectoral for chest disease, invigorating, strengthening teeth, and more.

In addition to the probable applications as medicine, tea, used as a daily beverage has made great contributions to human health in at least two major aspects.

Firstly, tea drinking changes the habit of how people consume water.

In ancient times, when people felt thirsty they would simply drink natural, unprocessed water that might contain pathogenic microbes.

Since the adoption of tea drinking, people had used boiling water to make tea infusion. In fact this practice helped people avoid a variety of infectious disease.

Secondly tea appears to be a good substitute for alcoholic beverages. This people who very much enjoyed tea drinking might avoid alcohol over consumption that causes severe damage to the human body.
Physiological and Therapeutic Effects of Tea

Chrysanthemum Tea

Chrysanthemum Tea
Chrysanthemum tea is prepared in the same way as traditional tea. The dried flowers are infused with hot water for over 10 min, and the tea is ready to serve.

For clinical usage, the chrysanthemum is boiled either alone or together with various other herbs, according to the prescriptions to suit a specific clinical purpose.

Based on traditional usage, in addition to use as a tea, C. morifolium is used for the common cold, fever, migraines, conjunctivitis, eye, irritation, hypertension, ulcerative colitis, vertigo, ophthalmia with swelling and pain, etc.

As a mixture with other herbs, it has been claimed to be able to relieve migraines and eye irritation, improve vision, and cure keratitis.

The curing rates of ulcerative colitis and hypertension are reported to be more than 90% and 80% respectively.

Apart from the above traditional usages, there are also reports of other usage, such as antitumor activities.

Chrysanthemum water extract was found to significantly inhibit growth of transplanted tumor in nude mice, suggesting that the water-soluble components of chrysanthemum may have potent chemopreventive effects.

Although chrysanthemum is considered to be a “mild” herb and almost with no side effect in traditional medical practice, adverse effect has been reported with its flowers, and leaves may cause skin dermatitis.

In contrast there was no report that drinking chrysanthemum tea could cause respiratory or alimentary tract irritation.
Chrysanthemum Tea

Choosing Beverage for Health

Choosing Beverage for Health
People have a surprisingly accurate ability to regulate the amount of food they eat day to day.

If we can eat a very large meal, for instance, we tend to make up for it by eating a little less at the next meal.

But sweetened beverages seem to throw this natural ability out of whack. Different mechanisms control thirst and huger in the brain; we wired to think of solids as food and liquid as water.

When we take in a liquid that’s full of calories, we don’t seem to register those calories in the same way as if they were solid food.

Instead, may people can easily guzzle twenty-four ounces of a sweetened beverage as if it were water.

The frightening rise in obesity among children stems from a lot of different factors. But one of the likely culprits is the trends toward drinking larger and larger quantities of beverage, especially sweetened one.

Many parents allow their kids to drink sweetened beverage throughout the day as a substitute for water or as a way to pacify them with something sweet-tasting.

When we start to think of caloric beverages as food, we can realize how allowing a child to idly sip on a beverage throughout the day can really throw an otherwise healthy diet out of balance, loading it with extra sugars and unneeded calories.

Children do need water to dehydrate them throughout the day. Make water the beverage of choice to quench a child’s thirst.

Other beverages should contribute to a child’s overall diet by providing nutrients – a small glass of 100 percent juice will add vitamins and minerals, while a glass of milk with meals or in cereal will help ensure that our child is consuming enough protein and calcium.

Add these drinks to help balance other foods in the diet, but not simply as a thirst-quencher.

In general, the more we can avoid sweetened beverages, the better.
Choosing Beverage for Health